Out with the old, in with the new

I can't believe I haven't posted since the beginning of August! After I had done so well posting every day of my week off..... Well, going back to work hit me like a sledgehammer, I was exhausted, no energy at all :-(

So what's been happening? Well I have had a birthday! I had great trouble thinking of something I wanted as a present, then finally, as I was trying to craft in the tiny area of my desk that wasn't covered with stash and scraps and glue and rubbish ............... it came to me. I needed a new desk! DH was a little bit puzzled.... "you want a piece of furniture for your birthday?"

So the order was placed with Argos, and they actually delivered on my birthday, which was nice. I resisted the temptation to sit at work phoning DS's to see if it had arrived yet.....

We built it over the weekend, and I have spent the last week or so taking everything out of my craft room and then trying to put it back. I now know exactly what I have, a blessing and a curse because now I have to use it!!! Everything is stored properly rather than stuffed into a gap where it will fit :-) My main problem seems to be fabric rather than paper - the result of too many visits to Crowsons fabric factory sale .... oh and all the patchwork fabric I have bought....

ahem.

And here it is! everything to hand and still space to work ..............bliss :-)

Strawberry mini flans

Just a quick update to show you what I did with those mini flan cases I baked on Friday. I haven't done anything like these before, and they got the thumbs up from Karen and Sy at the craft day yesterday - I made a cream cheese frosting rather than using whipped cream.

I managed to break my craft robo yesterday....... will have to be a bit creative about making titles until a new blade arrives LOL

Off to pack for today's crop now :-)

Day Five - Bread and Whine

OK Sy, suspense over - we did bake some choc chip muffins last night!

Today I had a wine delivery from Tesco, due to be delivered any time between 7am and 7pm ..... so I got up early (yawn!) and waited... and waited.....

In between, I did quite a lot of baking - I actually used two of my new tins from Lakeland, something of a record for me, usually I buy them, put them away, then discover them again later :-) I made an onion granary loaf, some mini sponge flan bases and some multi grain bread rolls. Also got five more patchwork blocks done - only 147 left to go :-)

The wine man finally arrived at about 4:30, and was a bit put out when I wanted to check the delivery - he wanted me to sign the little electronic gizmo without even seeing any paper work! Oh the paper will be in the box, he said. Hence the 'whine' in the title LOL. I opened the box and checked anyway :-)

Tomorrow is our monthly craft day, this month it's at my house. Sy turned up about an hour ago and she is offering helpful suggestions as I type LOL. Then Sunday will be the crop at Cardinal Colours, so I should have some LOs to post then.

So endeth the 5th and last day of my holiday. Look Sy, finally a baking blitz!

Day Four - shopping!

Today I planned shopping , baking and patchwork. Went off to Eastbourne in the morning, got most of what I wanted (though Next didn't have any socks -boo!) and had a good walk round. Lakeland had a baking tin I wanted, it's a bread tin with a lid, so the loaf is completely enclosed. Might try that out tomorrow...... They also had their new super duper baking range on 3 for 2 offer - so I bought 3 flat trays for biscuits. But when I got them home, they didn't fit my oven!!! Yes I know they say measure your oven first, but I didn't expect any problems with my new, standard size oven - not like I had with my old narrow one - and really, I would not have thought that the depth of the tray would be an issue! They stick out so much at the front of the oven shelf that I can't close the door on them, I am really disappointed. Apart from that, Lakeland was fab as usual, and I will have to take the trays back on Saturday morning before I pick up Karen for craft day.

I was a bit tired to start baking when I got back, so decided to try some patchwork instead. I have an awful lot of books on patchwork & quilting, but have never actually done a project from any of them! My previous attempts have just been sewing squares together, I have never made a proper patchwork block. Until now! I had a box full of DH's old work shirts, all the same sort of fabric, all blue toned, and I have kept them for years meaning to make a patchwork from them. I am now the proud owner of two blocks from these shirts! They are a bit wonky and could do with pressing, but they are my very first proper blocks :-) The project is from "Stashbuster quilts" by Lynne Edwards, for a single quilt I need 154 blocks. Two down......

It's now 8:30pm and I have cleared the kitchen from tea, not really sure I feel like starting any baking now - might see if DS1 wants to give me a hand, if not it will have to be tomorrow. I have to be in all day, not to mention getting up early, as Tesco are delivering some wine (slurp!) at any time between 7am and 7pm.

So endeth the fourth day. Sy, I am keeping you in suspense as to whether I bake or not :-)

Day Three - How can something so simple take so long?

Today I had the firm intention of finishing off the Venice picture, and baking something. But I started the day with a lie in, then a trip to Tesco .... it was nearly midday before I even started :-) The picture took a lot longer than I thought it would - the backing card is too short for the frame so I cut borders for top and bottom (which I knew I would have to do, just didn't think it would take so long!). Then it was time to stick the photos down, also took a long time as my plan had them lined up quite accurately and it was fiddly to do. Thank heaven for repositionable adhesive, that's all I am going to say......! I am really pleased with the (finally) finished result.

I also got another layout finished (adding journalling, again) and did an awesome dinner of braised beef (in the slowcooker) complete with veg and yorkshire puds - yummy. So the baking fell by the wayside today, but there is always tomorrow!

So endeth the third day. Sy, no cooking, as you said dinner doesn't count ...... :-)

Day two - Have your cake and eat it

I spent most of today wrestling with what I had originally thought was a brilliant idea........ a large (50 x 65 cm) photo montage of Venice. We have some beautiful pictures, which will of course be scrapped - eventually - but I wanted to put some of them on the wall too. First I drew a plan on graph paper of how I wanted the photos arranged and what sizes they needed to be. Then I spent some time choosing 18 pictures from the 3000 or so that we took - most of the time was spent waiting for the dratted things to load onto the screen! Then I resized, printed and laid out on the backing card, to be stuck down tomorrow. It sounds so simple, but it took ages.


In between, I managed to bake a cake and finish another layout. The cake is called hummingbird cake, I have no idea why - no hummingbirds were harmed in the making of this cake - it contains pineapple, coconut and bananas and is a really good lunch box cake. It's from an Australian Woman's weekly cookbook, called "Cafe Cakes". I managed to restrain DS1 from eating them until I had taken a picture!


The layout is another one started at a crop (the month before last, I am ashamed to say!) which needed the title stamped - I hadn't taken along the right stamps - and some journalling done. I added some eyelets on the spur of the moment and really like how they look. My page count is going to be really good this month, if I keep finishing things off like this :-)


So endeth the second day. Look, Sy, cooking!

Week off, Day One - The Layout from Hell

I have a weeks holiday :-) Time to catch up on crafty stuff, cooking stuff, oh and some of that housework (sorry, didn't mean to swear) too. Sy says she expects a progress report on crafting or cooking every day - oh dear!

Well, day one. A lie in, a bit of shopping and a walk round town (exercise is also on my list for this week). Then some crafting interspersed with helping DS1 organise the piles of stuff he brought back from uni. First up was the Layout from Hell - I had done a bit of this on Sunday but was determined to finish it today. It had been started at the last crop, the central block and the photos had been stuck down, but I was stuck on it after that, because it was just too symmetrical - even for me, the queen of straight lines. So yesterday I thought I would knock off the symmetry a bit by adding the title, some journalling and some stamps in a more random way. Well everything that could go wrong, did. I tried a large corner stamp in the bottom left corner, it didn't stamp properly and looked awful. So I dug out some flocked card (Doodlebug, I think) and cut a large corner to cover the mis-stamping, a medium corner for the bottom right side and two small corners for the top. Then I found some Rusty Pickle letter stickers for the sub-titles (Castle Dracula and the King's Palace). So far so good, and that was how I left it on Sunday.

This morning I found that a letter F sticker had dropped off the backing sheet and stuck itself onto a photo. Took the most care possible in removing it, but it still left a nasty smear across the picture. Arrgghh! So I had to print another one, which meant guessing how big I had printed it the first time - I ended up getting it right second try - and putting it over the top. I decided to stamp along the top edges of the pages, this isn't exactly perfect either, but it will do! For the title I used the McGill fancy squares punches, small and large, and punched the squares from the flocked card. Then I wanted to use some gothic-y/medieval-ish letters for the word "Romania" and remembered that I had bought the alpha set a couple of years ago but had never got around to sticking the rubber on to the little wooden blocks. Ok, so 20 minutes later..... stamps are mounted and ready to go. I stamped them on the same cream as the background of the page, punched them into little squares, mounted them onto foam blocks and put them onto the punched flock squares. They didn't really show up, so the title was more or less unreadable. Grrr! So I dug around in my thickers collection to see what letters I had left in the chestnut set, and amazingly, I had all the letters for Romania. So they went on top of the little letter squares on top of the flocked squares. The last thing was the journalling, which I printed onto Safmat (along with a few others I need to add to other pages), put it on a mat and stuck it down. Finished at last..... and actually, I rather like it now!

The second LO was a piece of cake after that, another one started at a crop, but needing some journalling, which I had also printed onto the Safmat. Matted up and stuck down, looks good!

So endeth Day One. Sorry Sy, no cooking today.